The CBI court in Hyderabad on Tuesday, in its verdict in the Obulapuram mining case, found former Karnataka Minister and current MLA aligned with the BJP, Gali Janardhan Reddy, guilty.
Reddy, along with B.V. Srinivasa Reddy, Mefaz Ali Khan, and V.D. Rajagopal, was convicted, while BRS MLA Sabitha Indra Reddy and former IAS officer Kripanandam were acquitted.
The CBI court sentenced Gali and the other convicts to seven years. As per the provisions of existing laws for public representatives, the CBI court verdict should immediately lead to Gali’s disqualification as an MLA in the Karnataka Legislative Assembly.
The case pertains to illegal mining operations in the Bellary reserve forest in Anantapur district of Andhra Pradesh.
It dates back to 2009, when the CBI found that the then Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy government favoured OMC (Obulapuram Mining Company) in granting iron ore mining leases in Obulapuram, Andhra Pradesh.
Following an investigation, a centrally appointed committee of the Supreme Court uncovered significant violations by OMC.
It also declared the mining lease granted to the company — which was run by Gali and his family — by the Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy government as illegal.
Gali was allotted 10,760 acres of government land by the YSR government in 2007 for the establishment of a ₹20,000-crore captive steel plant.
As a remedy, the committee recommended suspending mining activities until boundary pillars were erected and boundary posts laid along the state border.
Responding to these findings, the Congress government under K. Rosaiah in Andhra Pradesh suspended mining operations by OMC and requested a CBI investigation in December 2009. Since then, the central agency has interrogated 219 witnesses and examined 3,400 documents.
The agency filed its first charge sheet in December 2011. In total, four charge sheets were submitted against nine individuals.
The CBI charge sheet states that Gali and others illegally mined iron ore beyond their lease areas, including in Karnataka’s forest lands, causing a loss of ₹884.13 crore to the exchequer.
The initial accused in the case include Gali.
B.V. Srinivasa Reddy (OMC managing director), Mefaz Ali Khan (Gali’s personal assistant).
V.D. Rajagopal (former director of the mines department), Kripanandam (a retired IAS officer), Sabitha Indra Reddy (Telangana minister), Y. Srilakshmi (an IAS officer), and R. Linga Reddy (assistant director of the mines department).
The accused were charged under IPC Sections 120B (criminal conspiracy), 420 (cheating), 409 (criminal breach of trust), 468 and 471 (forgery), and under Sections 13(2) and 13(1)(d) of the Prevention of Corruption Act.
Among the accused, R. Linga Reddy, who had allegedly played a key role in ensuring OMC received these leases while ignoring 23 other applicants, died during the course of the case.
Meanwhile, IAS officer Y. Srilakshmi was acquitted by the Telangana High Court in 2022. The court gave her a clean chit in the decade-old case, in which she had spent several months in jail. It also quashed the additional charge sheet filed by the CBI citing a lack of evidence.
The CBI had alleged that Srilakshmi misused her office during her tenure from 2007 to 2009 as Secretary, Industries and Commerce, in the government of then undivided Andhra Pradesh. She was in jail from November 2011 to October 2012.
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